H. C. Watkins Art
Handmade Beaded art by Carter Watkins
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ABOUT

I’m a multidisciplinary artist and designer from Austin Texas. I left Austin once to study Architecture and Environmental Design at Arizona State. I have spent the majority of my professional career as an Art Director and Graphic Designer.

About the Art: I made my first beaded skull in 2014. I had a longhorn skull with a Texas flag painted on it that I bought off the side of the road when I was in high school (2004). It was cool! I took it with me to college and brought it back with me when I came home (that thing is 42 inches wide, its not easy to pack into a car). My wife and I bought a house in 2014 and we decided to retire the dusty Texas Flag longhorn-it no longer jived with the vibe. I’m a gringo Texan but my mom spoke fluent spanish and loved taking us south of the border and exposing us to Mexican culture. I saw Huichol bead art for the first time in a shop in Playa Del Carmen sometime in the early 2000’s on one of our trips. It was a life sized carving of a Jaguar covered with millions of little beads. It was stunning. Over a decade later I decided I was going to learn how they made that jaguar.

I use beeswax and glass seed beads. Each bead is placed one at a time. Most of my geometric design work is improvised as I go. I start by selecting a ‘canvas’ object. For skulls I’m looking for good horn/antler symmetry and I want all the fragile pieces (around the snout and eye sockets) to be intact. Then I select the color palette and cover the surface in beeswax. I find the starting point (usually the midpoint between the eyes) and I start “pokin’ beads”. I try to find balanced-color-rhythms. The rhythms then become patterns and shapes and the design emerges. For some pieces I come up with a design theme or motif before I start beading. The cool part about this artform is: if you make something ugly, you just scrape the ugly part off and try again.

A lot of people ask about the durability of my work. It is fragile. However I have seen a piece fall off the wall behind my tv and I was surprised with how minimal the damage was. In the summer my studio can get into the high 90s. At first I was concerned that the heat would cause the beads to droop or slide off but it only seemed to make the beads bond stronger. Skulls are awkward shapes and the most fragile parts- the snout, and around the eye sockets- are usually the most exposed to dings when moving. I typically spray a couple coats of acrylic resin on a completed piece in an effort secure the weak spots. All pieces come with a bag of replacement beads and wax and I’ll include instructions for minor repairs with each order.

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Artist Statement

Carter Watkins is a self-taught artist from Austin, Texas who has been creating his highly-detailed, micro-mosaic beaded sculptures since 2014. His beading technique is inspired by traditional Huichol artisans-- using beeswax to adhere individually-placed seed beads to the surface of the substrate. His craftsmanship, subject matter, and artistic style is informed by his career as an Art Director and Designer.

Carter specializes in transformations of found/organic objects such as animal skulls and guitars into works of art. It is a devotional art-form, each piece is one-of-a-kind, and takes a long time to make. His subject matter covers a variety of genres, from vibrant free-form geometric, rhythmic designs to landscape scenes and illustrative portraits.

In 2019, Carter produced a total of 37 different beaded sculptures, 10 of which were private commissions. His work has been featured in The Austin-American Statesman, Austin Monthly, and Texas Monthly.

Extra Info

I’m a multidisciplinary artist and designer from Austin Texas. I left Austin once to study Architecture and Environmental Design at Arizona State. I have spent the majority of my professional career as an Art Director and Graphic Designer

I use beeswax and glass seed beads. Each bead is placed one at a time. Most of my geometric design work is improvised as I go. I start by selecting a ‘canvas’ object. For skulls I’m looking for good horn/antler symmetry and I want all the fragile pieces (around the snout and eye sockets) to be intact. Then I select the color palette and cover the surface in beeswax. I find the starting point (usually the midpoint between the eyes) and I start “pokin’ beads”. I try to find balanced-color-rhythms. The rhythms then become patterns and shapes and the design emerges. For some pieces I come up with a design theme or motif before I start beading. The cool part about this artform is: if you make something ugly, you just scrape the ugly part off and try again.

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